Warhammer Online haz Blades!

If you didn't know I'm a tech geek. Have been for over 20 years and currently work for a fortune 500 company as an IT consultant. So it's with some interest that I read the Gamasutra article about Warhammer Online's Virginia server farm. Keep in mind it's an "Intel sponsored" article, which is a euphemism for "advertisement". And it is repleat with what one would expect from that sort of thing. However, the grist of what I was really interested in starts on page 2 and gives you a bit of a glipse into how those pixils come to life.

"Our Server Farm in Virginia, for example," Mann said, "has about 60 Dell Blade chassis running Warhammer Online-each hosting up to 16 servers. All in all, we have about 700 servers in operation at this location."

Problem is that Lum predicts Warhammer will have all of one "server" (meaning world cluster) as 2010 comes to a close. Unfortunately I'm inclined at agree as Mythic has been forced to shutter 3/4's of their "servers" over the past several months. Warhammer just didn't pan out like many claimed it would and from most accounts Mythic isn't doing the things they really need to be doing in order to correct the underlying issues that have lead to that exodus of players. All we really know is that Warhammer has somewhere less than 300k players currently, though I suspect they are south of 200k.

This is the part I think a lot of people really need to become more aware of when they question development decisions. Why exactly do you not want Auction Houses in Dalaran for instance. Answer: because that would certainly concentrate too many people in one small place too often.

As might be expected in a game scenario in which the levels of participation vary dramatically at different times of the day, in different regions, and with different types of activity, performance scaling is an essential component of successful server operation.

"One of our ongoing challenges," Mann commented, "is where to distribute people in the world. Our processes-that we distribute across the physical hardware-correspond to locations in the virtual world. One of the focuses of our game, the big focus, is to get a lot of people in one place and have them all fighting with each other. And that, unfortunately, works against us in the process distribution model."

"When you put a lot of people in one place, you're putting their entire server load onto one piece of hardware. We do have some technology to mitigate that. Our scenario system (which spawns up smaller arenas for smaller teams dynamically) allows us to split people off to different pieces of hardware if we need to, dynamically, in smaller chunks."

Using this approach, the application, instead of coping with 800 people in an area on one system, can take 400 of those people out of an area and engage them in smaller fights. Most of the parallelism for these kinds of operations, Shaw noted, is done by process, not by thread.

Most players are simply ignorant of the fact that for every pixil they push around on a screen, there has to be CPU cycles and RAM on the server side that keeps track of it. Not only must it keep track of "it" but also broadcast your location to every other player in the vicinity. And every NPC in that location as well. Along with weather elements, and anything else that must be tracked or rendered. Your client might make the pretty renders for you, but it's the server backside that is coordinating the show, so when you complain about "lag" it's usually one of two things. It's either the "server" experiencing rampant processes, induced by code errors or it's a simple matter of cpu utilization. It's amazing how tuned these clusters have to be to operate a virtual world, and when you have too much activity going on in one zone the server eventually gets to a point where it simply exceeds norms. Player meet lag, lag meet player. Now, don't QQ when you ahve to hobble back to the old world for your auctions!

Sith in TOR

I haven't blogged about TOR in a while. Mainly because not a whole lot has really been going on there for the past few weeks, but this video from last Friday really caught my attention. It might be a week old, but it's certainly worth watching and listening to the concepts of the sith classes. If you're into that sort of thing, of course. No wussie Jedi's here, friend!



First I'm taken by the clean UI, which looks --shall we say it?-- wow-alike. You at least get a few additional glimpses of the combat abilities that the Sith Warrior and Inquisitor have, though I do admit the classes fall into typical MMO stereotypes. The Sith Warrior as melee DPS, and the Inquisitor as a mostly caster DPS type. To be honest that suits me just fine as Bioware's goal was to give life Sith archetypes and not necessarily break new ground in the quest to create new classes in the MMO-verse. I think my favorite part of the clip is at about the 2 minute mark where you see an Inquisitor take on three NPCs, CC'ing one while using devastating Force Lightning attacks to kill both of the others. Some how I see that being great fun in large battles!

Happy New Years Eve

The year is officially drawing to a close today. Hope you had as good a 2009 as I did, and I hope you have an even better 2010!

Shadowmourne Update

The decision on how we as a guild would handle Shadowmourne was finally made tonight. As I had mentioned it came down to three of us who had perfect, or nearly perfect attendance records and would bring tremendous value to the raid team. Last night the officers made the decision that the first handful of Primordial Saronites would be rolled on and handed out to the crafters so they could get patterns. Then the next five or so would be handed to the person who is to go on and make a run for Shadowmourne. It was also decided that because the Guild leader couldn't decide which of us three would get the axe that we should all roll and the highest roll would win. We had that roll tonight. Of all the rolls I have ever made, I knew I needed to win this one, and with a roll of 72 I did. I will be the sole recipient of the 60 shards I will need to collect in the quest chain before I can complete the Shadowmourne quest.

There can be only one.

Sayla is back and refutes the wow tourism theory

To quote and axoim, opinions are like "something", and everyone has one. It's certainly no surprise to me that MMO players are some of the most opinionated people you can find, and just occasionally some of them write a blog. Like Sayla over at Mystic Worlds, which I have been following for a few years now. Unfortunately Sayla took a bit of a break over the Summer but she seems to be back now and pretty handily lays low Syncaine's entire theory about "wow tourism". Though I doubt that was her intention.

Syncaine's theory involves rabid mobs of WoW players buying new MMOs, driving up expectations and fanfaire about the game, then leaving in droves never having had intentions of staying in the first place. His theory states that the players are, unintentionally or not, destroying these other MMOs. I've written responses to his theory, which I find to be completely without merit, but no response I've written is anywhere near as succinct and thorough as what I just read from Sayla. Those market forces I've written about previously are all summed up quite nicely.

In short:

You’ll need to do it DIFFERENT or BETTER than, where I’ve been before.

Saurfang is down

It took us four additional attempts this evening, but we finally killed Deathbringer Saurfang on 25-man. Looking at the mechanics of the fight one would think this was actually an easy fight to complete, yet the entire rub of it is control of the blood beasts and deciding what to do with the people who get the mark of the champion. If too many people are getting hit by the blood beasts then you end up with too many Marks of the Champion too early and Saurfang either heals too much or you end up losing too much DPS/heals. If you can maintain discipline, and not allow the blood beasts to get "stuck" on the melee and can kite them well enough and not allow anyone to get hit, the fight is really in the bag.

This boss kill was a hard one coming for us, probably taking about 10-12 attempts, but we did it. And none too soon with the next wing opening in seven days.

Loot etiquette

Along with the apparent controversial nature of the new LFG system comes along loot etiquette controversies as well. You can't go a day on the forum without seeing a host of threads pertaining to people upset that someone rolled need on a piece of gear they think should be reserved for their class alone, or like me, have general misgivings about the restrictions of the new rolling system. As explained by Blizzard:

There has been some confusion regarding looting items when using the new Dungeon Finder system so we would like to take a moment and provide an explanation for some of these new features.

Anytime players are matched up with other players using the Dungeon Finder system, the looting option is automatically set to “Need Before Greed” which is designed to be a fair system that rewards items to the classes they are designed for. While there can be some finer details on how this works, here is an overview on this system:

• The “need” option is only available for both armor and weapons that are designed for your class. Caster classes and hybrid caster classes can roll “need” on items with intellect and/or spell power while melee classes cannot. Melee classes and hybrid melee classes can roll “need” on the items without intellect and/or spell power. There is an additional restriction that only allows characters to roll for armor items if it’s the armor type that is designed for their class. So since cloth armor is designed for mages, priests, and warlocks only they can roll “need” on these armor types. Then leather armor is for druids and rogues, mail armor for hunters and shaman, and plate for death knights, paladins, and warriors. Keep in mind that these restrictions only apply to items above a certain item level since the breakdown of stats is very different in the early leveling area of the game.

• We also introduced a “disenchant” option that is open to all classes on all items whenever a player with the sufficient level of skill in enchanting is in the group to disenchant the item that just dropped. If the winner of the item has selected this option the item will automatically be disenchanted and the resulting material(s) placed in the character’s bags instead of the item. Just like it was before the patch, disenchanting any item is not reversible and the item is permanently removed so you should only select this option if you have no plans to use the item or trade it to another player.
  
  
• The “greed” option is open to all classes and all item types but the players who roll greed will also roll against those who select disenchant. The reason for this is that if an item is not a high priority and/or eligible to be rolled “need” on, then other players running the dungeon have an equal chance to get a reward for defeating the encounter.

As far as how the whole Dungeon Finder system works, it matches up characters with others in their entire Battlegroup instead of just their individual realm. Once a dungeon is completed players go back to their respective realms where they cannot communicate or trade with players on other realms, so any items you gained in the dungeon can no longer be traded to another character in the group. If you are considering giving an item to another player, you must do so before either character leaves the dungeon.

We appreciate all of the feedback from the community so far and we will continue to monitor and resolve any questions or issues as they come up.

No more rolling need on Leather or cloth spell power items if you are a Holy Pally. And no more rolling on Cloth spell power items if you are a Resto or Balance Druid for example. The real problem with this is that greed rolls and Disenchant rolls are giving the same priority, so if you want something and can't roll need on it you'll have to roll greed. If anyone else rolls DE and wins, you don't have the option to ask for the item afterward because it's auto-DE'd and the winner gets the mats and not the item itself. This of course only occurs if you have an enchanter in your group, but I can say from my own personal observations running four characters through dungeons daily, that most groups have enchanters in them.

To get around these artificial limits a great many are simply rolling need on anything they can, instead of observing what were considered to be the "universal loot etiquette" that has held sway up until this point. Not surprisingly the "new" practice is causing somewhat of an uproar. Not uncharacteristically Blizzard has responded, I think recognizing the conundrum they've created:

I know in the past the general rule was to roll need for main spec, greed for offspec, and then pass for the disenchant. With the new system it works a little differently in my play experience. Now my groups tend to roll need on anything that is a main spec or offspec upgrade, then greed/disenchant if you have no use for the item. If anybody really wants the item they speak up on it and we work it out from there.

Which of course calls into question the entire need of a greed roll to begin with. Except that is causes loot drama on the runs where it occurs. This is a case where I can see both sides of the debate. I'd be equally perturbed to lose a piece I actually needed rolling greed to someone that DE'd it as I would rolling need only to lose to someone rolling need for the piece as off spec. So what are we to do collectively about this? Unless Blizzard either rolls back the loot preference rules, allowing us to go back to the older need/greed etiquette and giving DE a lower priority than greed rolls, or I think we'll have to simply accept that off spec rolls are going to be need rolls from here on.

Ignorance is ignorant

In followup to my previous post on the subject, and in response to yesterday's WoWinsider article I have a great deal more to say. First and foremost I wish to say that there is only one time I would probably publicly ridicule someone in a group, and that is if they were intentionally doing something that was counter to good practices. Something along the lines of a Rogue rushing into a room to agro everything then vanishing, leaving the rest of the group eating a room full of pissed off NPCs. I've actually seen that. Short of that I wouldn't say anything publically, though I might mutter to myself how badly a run was going. And most likely if a run were going that badly I would make a judgment call and either stick it out or leave.

However, let us look at the letter the ladies at WoWinsider got recently and which they themselves responded to.

Dear Drama Mamas: Last night, I was running H CoS on my mage, gearing her for frost PvE (I know it's not optimal, but it is viable -- and my favorite). The group I was in consisted of a hunter, death knight, shaman (healer) and paladin (tank). The pally tank was fully geared in at least ToGC gear (if not ICC), but the other DPS were obviously just graduating to Heroics. The tank was upset that my DPS was only slightly above his and that the hunter and DK were well below him. He proceeded to insult and belittle the DPS for being below him and started swearing, because he thought we would not be able to get the extra boss (and therefore the extra badge). I told him to stop being so rude, that the DPS were here to gear up and he should lay off; he just told me I was a scrub ...

I can understand his frustration. He feels like he is missing out on a chance to get an extra badge. However, I don't think it is necessary to verbally abuse other players just because of their place on the meters. If we had been in ToC or one of the new five-man heroics, I think he would have a point. But CoS is a lower-level heroic than those instances, and the DPS were par for the course.

... I don't think it is fair to mock someone because their toon isn't as geared as you would like it to be. Isn't that why they're here? I guess my question is, who was right? I get that the general rule is for the DPS to be above the tank. But how is that fair when your tank is pulling near 3K DPS? How can he ask that the DPS be competitive if he isn't willing to run low-level heroics with them? Do they (we) deserve to be made fun of because our alts are not as geared as their mains, because we are here trying to gear them? Signed, Abused and Confused

I've been seeing more and more of these types of stories on the forum lately. While the LFG system in my view is wonderful it also has the side effect of bringing people that probably didn't run too many pugs previously back into the fold. Those people either didn't run pugs because they couldn't stand the run of the mill people who pull groups they aren't supposed to, target mobs not being tanked by the tank and therefore continuously gain agro, or are just not good healers. Take your pick, there are undoubtedly a million reasons why a lot of people preferred not to run pugs previously, with the problems associated with putting groups together being only one. Those people instead formed static groups and ran dungeons with them.

Patch 3.3 came and changed all of that. Now it's much simpler and much faster to use the LFG system. You can earn a tremendous amount of badges in very little time and that allure is just too much to ignore. Now those people who are used to playing with high quality players are instead being grouped with people that might be less skilled or geared than they are used to. Nothing wrong with that and I've yet to personally see anything like what the ladies at WoWInsider responded to, though I very often see DPS in groups that are much below myself or are just low in general. Again, nothing wrong with that. As long as things go smoothly.

So lets take a look at what just happened to me and then lets take a look at that letter to Wowinsider again. I have been running my four most geared 80's through the daily random dungeon for Frost badges in order to buy Primordial Saronites for my Pally's Shadowmourne quest. Two of those characters are well geared and could easily fit into any ICC-25/10 run (or any other raid) for the weekly quest as well. One of them right at 5k gear score, and which I actually consider to be medium-high geared. He also could get into any weekly raid, but my fourth character had been benched for some time (my Rogue) and had just two pieces of T8 and the remaining pieces were assorted Heroic ilevel 200 purples. He is definitely good enough to run the daily random for Frost badges, but no where geared enough to run the last couple weeklies and so I have been putting in many hours this last week running him through countless dungeons to get badges in order to upgrade all his gear. He's now in 4 pieces of T9, has a 232 pair of pants, has a 232 dagger to go with his off hand 213 dagger, a 226 belt and neck, and some other pieces that are not too bad. In fact all that I really want to replace at this point are his ilevel 200 bracers and his 200 ring. I'd like to replace that ilevel 213 dagger too, but I'm not overly worried about it right now. He's definitely good enough as of today to run pretty much any raid we're likely to currently see as a weekly. I say all this as back ground so you understand that I'm on a mission, and I would think that I'm not alone in that.

So there I was in LFG, taking an invite to a random dungeon and porting into the Forge of Souls. Of the three new 5-mans, it's the easiest but definitely more difficult than previous dungeons. You can't "graduate" into heroics and expect to start running these. That is unless you are to be carried, yet what about the tank and healer? They clearly will have the hardest tasks in FoS as there are multiple caster mobs that are not easily tanked for typical AOE bombardment. There is a lot of AOE damage that will be thrown at the party and the healer has to be on his or her game to keep everyone alive. Yet that is not what I just saw in my last FoS run. The Mage died on the very first two mobs, literally killing himself in one shot from the spell reflect. That wasn't the healers fault. The next set of mobs just up the ramp was though. The tank, healer, and mage died. My Rogue and the hunter survived and killed the last two mobs at which point I inspected the healer. I had already seen he had a 3100 gear score going in, but I wasn't expecting to see ungemmed/unenchanted purple gear to go along with some of his blue unenchanted gear. The healer was simply not geared well enough for the content, nor even prepared to be a healer. I don't want to link to his armory and call him out, though I would like to discuss his gear briefly and illustrate what I think a lot of people like me are finding frustrating at times.

Head - Gaze of the Somber Keeper - gemmed but no head enchant
Neck - Frozen Tear of Elune
Shoulder - Mantle of the Tribunal - no shoulder enchant, but since it's blue would you put one on anyway? He didn't.
Back - Wisp Cloak - no enchant
Chest - Chestguard of the Broken Branches - no gemmed or enchanted
Wrist - Bindings of Wicked - enchanted, but with hit on it, it's not a healing piece.
Hands - Malfurian's Handguards of Conquest - not gemmer or enchanted
Waist - Binding of the Tranquil Glade - no belt buckle and second gem
Legs - Leggings of the Snowy Bramble
Feet - Earthgiving Boots - not enchanted
Ring 1 - Signet of Purity -
Ring 2 - Voodoo Signet - Hit/not a healing ring
Trinket 1 - Tears of the Vanquished
Trinket 2 - Harbinger's Wrath
Weapon - Surgeon's Needle
Off-hand - Handbook of Obscure Remedies
Ranged - Idol of the Flourishing Life

From his gear you can see he is newly 80 and either does not understand that he needs to pay closer attention to his mana regen capabilities (415/243 MP5 w/658 Spirit) or is completely unaware of his class mechanics and shouldn't have been attempting to heal at all at this point, let alone any of the new 5-mans. I have no issues with people who are a bit under performing tagging along, but the tank and healer slots are key and you need to make sure you are prepared for that position before you subject others to your failings. This individual is just an example of what I see as a problem that has taken hold of the PUG system lately. People are given an inch (new fast LFG system) and want to take a mile (unprepeared and want to be carried regardless).

Now lets look at that email again. The poor Mage is admittedly undergeared and complains of being belittled by the tank who is evidently frustrated with the group. The problem is these types of stories, and mine, are told from a point of view that isn't necessarily shared by others. The Mage can not possibly know how many previous groups said tank might have had to bite his tongue through, or know whether the tank has already had to drop previous groups and be penalized with having to wait out the penalty timer. The Mage has no way of knowing how many bad players the tank has had to put up with that might have pulled extra groups, or evidently don't understand the necessity of targetting the tanked add(s). All the Mage knows is her DPS is low and she wants to tag along in a heroic to get to free loot. The problem with her story is that we have to take her at her word on the swearing though we have no idea what the tank actually said or how he said it. And we have no idea how sensitive the Mage might actually be. We also have no idea just how low her DPS is. If she's below the tank in DPS then I can sort of see the point of the tank that perhaps she needs to be running regular dungeons instead. After all I am a stickler for proper progression.

All that being said, if I had been the tank I probably would have just kept my misgivings to myself and finished the dungeon without a word. What I want in any run is a quick and smooth run, and as long as the dungeon was going to be finished I probably would have been satisfied with that. But that's me. The problem as I really see it are these ladies at WoWinsider who are dispensing advice to the public that seems to cement this attitude of entitlement and instant gratification. You have the right to expect when you join the group that everyone knows their class and their roll. And you have the right to expect that everyone will contribute to the group's success. You do not have the right to expect that you can literally walk along behind the group and do nothing while the rest of the group gets you badges and loot. That's simply not fair. So before you decide to send WoWinsider more letters complaining about people who seem to be a bit frustrated dealing with people who have entitlement complexes, please look in the mirror and ask yourself one very simple question. Should I really be here?

Merry Christmas!

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

In defense of ignorance indeed

I read an interesting post on wowinsider this morning. It's another of a recent trend toward lower and lower expectations that quite frankly disappoints me. While I am very much supportive of the new LFG system, I am not very supportive of under-geared or under-performing characters coasting along if they cause problems for the run. That might sound awful elitist of me, and perhaps it is, but I have my own "ethical" stance on dungeon/raid running that I would like to see a whole lot of other people using as well. Simply put I won't subject a group to my performance until I'm sure that I should be there. And as I mentioned before, I feel very strongly about the intended progression of things and I do not like to see people trying to skip that. Especially off the backs of others.

What Allison Robert doesn't understand about why people are becoming more vocal about under-performing people is that players, by and large, do not want difficulty in completing runs any longer. It was always hard enough to find groups to begin with, so many people took the good with the bad to some extent. Now however groups are easy to come by and I think most people just want to get in, get their badges or some loot, and get out. I know I don't want to wipe in a heroic these days. All that being said, a DPS that is under-geared for something is much easier to accept than a tank or a healer, who clearly are the lynch pins of the group. It's not that big of a deal (to me) if all the DPS isn't on the same level, and I think one can safely ignore the person who might be doing half the DPS of others in a group. But that simply isn't the case for Tanks and Healers. Have you seen an under-geared tank or healer in the new 5-mans? It's not pretty.